Why some children can't sit still | Integrated Learning Therapy

You may notice those children who simply can’t sit still but wriggle and shift in their chairs. The culprit may be a reflexive movement that is necessary for our development but if not integrated due to some hiccup, can cause later difficulties with posture.

The Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR) is one of the primitive, reflexive movements made by all human babies. The STNR is an automatic movement that makes the top half of the body work in opposition to the bottom half. This means that when the top half of the body is straight, the bottom half bends, and vice versa. It also makes it possible for the right and left sides of the body to work together. The reflex is activated by a change in the position of the neck, which produces a change in the muscular tension (tonic).

The reflex makes it possible for a baby to crawl and then after a good long period of crawling – about six months – the child should have crawled enough to be in control of his body rather than having the STNR in control. If something goes wrong along the developmental path, the child may not be able to crawl easily and so find the attempted movement so frustrating that they simply get up and walk early. This allows the STNR to remain past it’s due date!

Early on, the interference of the STNR may not be noticeable because young children are allowed lots of freedom to sit as they like and move more. They are seldom required to remain at a desk to complete tasks and listen to the teacher for long periods.

If his body is controlled by the STNR, a child will feel more comfortable if his arms are straight when sitting with knees and hips bent, or sitting with straight legs when the arms are bending in order to write. If the STNR caused a child’s arms to actually shoot straight out in front of them when their legs are bent, adults would realise a problem. But the reflex is not so obvious. We are talking about normal children who are still experiencing the ‘pull’ of the reflex, rather than being totally under its control. This means that they may be able to sit normally for a while but they cannot sit comfortably and they cannot sit still for long periods of time.

What you might see.

Children start to move in ways that help to relieve the physical tension they feel when required to sit still. They may reach their arms across the desk to try and maintain straight arms; they may sit on one or both legs under them; they may try to ‘lock’ their bodies into their chairs by wrapping their feet around the chair legs; they may prefer to lie on the floor; they may slouch in their chairs, keeping their arms and legs stretched in front on them; they may prefer to stand at their desks; they may try to write with their head on one of their arms.

And the STNR doesn’t only affect sitting but also impacts on other aspects of learning. For this reason, it is important to check that a retained STNR is not part or whole of your child’s ‘disruptive’ behaviours and school difficulties.

Image supplied by Freepik.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.